Caper Radio seeks new licence

Station might be heard across the Cape Breton Regional Municipality

SYDNEY, N.S. —

If everything goes according to plan, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality should be listening to a new radio station by the end of March.

Caper Radio is applying for a 50-watt, low-powered licence that will cover most of the CBRM. The Cape Breton University-affiliated station is presently operating a developmental campus station on the frequency of 107.3 Mhz but that licence expires on Aug. 31 of this year. According to Campus and community radio policy, Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2-10-499 22 July 2010, broadcasting licences for developmental radio stations cannot be renewed and station manager Jules Cameron says they had to apply for a different type of licence to keep going.

“We’re now on what you would call a developmental licence — that’s pretty much a radio licence that’s given for very low-powered stations, as a way to get our toes wet in the FM environment so we can figure out how to run an FM station,” says Cameron. “We’re applying for the community station which is a 50-watt low-powered licence that will cover a majority of the CBRM if we get approved for that. The email we got from the CRTC is basically a notice of the hearings that will take place on March 19 in Gatineau, Quebec, and we’re going to be one of the applicants or licencees that are going to be up for possible approval. They’re going to vote on if we will receive this licence or not.”

The licence will allow Caper Radio to continue on its path of becoming a more community-oriented station. The station plans to devote 90 hours of their 126 hours of programming for local programming.

“We’ve changed from being a CBU radio station to much more of a community-oriented station so what that means is that we’re putting more emphasis on getting content not only from people in Cape Breton but also from artists and bands in Nova Scotia and the Maritimes because there’s a lot of new labels that are sending us stuff and we’re putting a lot of it into our rotation.”

“I think we have a pretty good chance of getting the 50 watts unprotected licence because we have some support from other local stations such as The Coast and we have a very vibrant supportive music community and arts community that really wants to see us through this as well, the faculty here at CBU and the students want to see us expand so everyone can enjoy our programming,” said Cameron.

“We’ll find out a week or so after the hearing takes place if we got approved for our licence or not but we have something on our website, caper radio.ca.”

In addition, Cameron hope the public will also rally to their cause by supplying support letters that can be the forwarded to the CRTC.